27th March - How to make a knitted wire bangle!

Time for another How To..! A friend off Flickr makes fabulous necklaces using wire, beads and a crochet hook. Having seen her work, I thought I'd love to have a go, but I didn't have a crochet hook to hand - but I do have a load of knitting needles. So I experimented, and here's how you could have a go! (You need to know how to knit to do this!)

A knitted wool bangle!

You need a pair of metal knitting needles - it doesn't matter what size they are, I just grabbed what was to hand.

A roll of fine guage wire, preferably on a spool like cotton.

Beads - small ones, seed beads are best. You can use any size I should think, but I've found anything over 4mm is a bit too big.

Jewellery findings - cord end clamps, jump rings, pliers and cutters.

Firstly, thread the beads onto your wire. Don't cut off any length, simply thread on the beads to the loose end.

Cast on your stitches, using the wire - I've seen people put the spool of wire into a cup to stop it from running over the floor at this point, but I found it sat quite nicely on my bead board.

Here you can see the cast on stitches, and the beads threaded onto the wire. The beads should be between your stitches and the wire should run freely between the spool and the needles, so that you can pull up wire through, and knit comfortably.

A word about this. You will not be able to knit with the speed that wool can be knitted, and you will need to practise easing your free needle into the stitch. Even on a bead free row, which is a lot quicker, it is still slow going in comparison to wool knitting. Don't worry too much about this, it gets much faster with practise!

Initially when I started, I cast on only 20 or so stitches. On my next attempt, I cast on sufficient stitches to go around my wrist - but remember that this will be stretched and twisted when you take it off the needles. I admit I didn't count how many stitches I had, but I use short needles, and the needle was pretty full - you have to use your judgement as to how many stitches you need.

Basically, you then knit. Insert the free needle into the stitch, and before you wrap the wire around the stitch carrying needle, move beads up so that they are between where the wire exits the previous stitch, and the point where you will wrap it around the needle to form the next stitch.

How many beads you add per stitch is up to you. I added between two and three seed beads, to one large 4mm bead. If I had a larger bead, or a bugle for example that seemed to stretch the wire, I'd add an empty stitch to allow a little give when the knitting was being stretched and twisted. I like randomness but with practise I'm sure you could set up a pattern, or you could use identical beads. I'm already thinking of different combinations that I could use, and there are so many fabulous colours of wire out there these days - the sky is well and truly the limit on this!

This is the finished knitting. I did four rows, with an empty row in between the two beaded rows. I put that in solely to add 'give', not for decorative purposes.

I didn't cast this off - it's not that I don't believe that you could, but that it's quite difficult to do. I think if you do want to cast it off, you'd need to put in an empty row to do that. To secure it, I slid the knitting off the needle, and then threaded a long piece of wire through the open stitches. It's not like wool knitting, where stitches can disappear at the drop of a - well, I was going to say hat, but needle is really the word here!

When you've threaded the wire through, twist the end into the work (I actually do this several times as I thread through), and it's good if you've left a long chunk of loose wire at the start of the work. You can work the wire down to meet it, twist together and it's a good way to provide a link. If you twist this really well, you could add a big bead at the other end and have a loop and bead fastening.

At this point, you need to pull gently at both ends. Stretch it out to the length that you want. Do this gently, there's no need to heave at it. Then pick an end, and again, gently, twist. Grasp two or three larger beads, or a clump of seed beads and twist them; continue down the mesh. You can pull gently again whilst you do this - there is free give in this mesh if you've made your stitches loose enough, and looseness should be the key word here, and you're aiming to make a nice, chunky and long wire work. All the stitches will bunch up, and make for a fabulous mingle-mangle of beads and wire. We are aiming to make something neat, tidy or ordered here, we're going for random, freeform and meshed.

At this point, I find it best to add cord clamps. Do this in the standard manner - open the clamp slightly, pick a nice thick end of the wire and trim it off so that the clamp will enclose it. I also add a good jewellery glue - I use Strass, which I find very efficient. Close the clamp firmly over the ends of the bangle, and leave it to dry.

At that point I secure the fastening of the bangle either with a single large substantial jumpring - if it's big enough to slip over the hand, or with a clasp and jumpring if you're going to need to open and close it. If you have been clever enough to work in a redundancy of empty stitches at either end of the knitting part, you could of course thread these together, twist, and you'll have a bangle without any need of a fastener. Remember you are in charge of this bracelet, and it's going to be the way you want it to be!

The finished bangle!!!

And this is the green bangle that I made first. This is thicker because it's made of shorter strands wound together, and it's wrapped to a thick rubber circle because of the instability of the short strands. I don't want one to come apart when I'm wearing it!